Developers are TOTAL Slackers!

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Hey folks, I'm just driving to CrossFit and we're going to go to experienced devs subreddit to talk through one that's I think relevant for a bunch of people. It's another one on junior devs. Um, but in particular this one's kind of framed like this uh developer who's got more experience is dealing with someone who seems like uh they're no longer like a I don't know like brand new developer. The person they're talking about has been at the company like 3 years. So it's not like you know completely fresh out of school or something like that. That's they got three years. cuz they've been around for a little bit. Um, but this more senior person's kind of explaining it like it it seems like the other developers found out that they can kind of coast. Okay. So, um, their perspective, at least what they're observing is that the other developers like not showing up to meetings.

They're like the one doing the least amount of uh Whoops, I just chirped the tires. Um yeah, they're they're doing the least amount of work in terms of like amount of code. Um just like a lot of signs that it looks like this person's like disengaged and like um they said something about like when they're on call they're like oh like missed notifications. So a lot of things that point towards like coasting being disengaged this kind of stuff. And um my understanding from you know scanning this post is that um the poster saying you know seems like the manager wants the the other engineer gone. Uh this person is clearly not pleased with this engineer and they're like I don't know like I can't babysit them. Uh so like do I just kind of sit back and let them get fired? Like you know what I mean?

It's like at what point do they do they step in? What like is it their responsibility? They're like I'm not their manager. So, I thought this was like a relevant one to talk through because when we're going over these topics and you know talking about teamwork, we're talking about like helping mentor and coach junior engineers. Um what do you do in a situation where it's like it feels very apparent to you that this person just doesn't give a right? like why should you care if they don't? And so it it is an interesting dynamic. And when I think about this as a manager, one of the things that I I try to air on the side of is like I I think it's a lot less common that people are maliciously doing things. Like I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm not saying it's, you know, the count is zero.

It's never happened. Uh certainly that would be uh wildly incorrect, but I think that it's less common that you have someone like what this uh engineer is describing where someone's like, "Hey, like screw this place, man. I'm just going to slack off and do nothing and they're just going to keep paying me like awesome. Let me take advantage of this." I feel like that's less common than people who are like finding it challenging to get engaged and that can be for many different reasons. So, you know, the I think the short answer to this person's question like is it their responsibility? Like no, it's it's absolutely not their responsibility and like they aren't this person's manager. Is it the manager's responsibility? Um, I would say it's the manager's responsibility to to figure something out 100%.

And so, I do think that it's valuable feedback to a manager like from this person's peer to be able to say like, hey, like I'm noticing things like I have concerns, but the the framing for this kind of thing I think is important. And this person kind of said it right in their post. They're they're saying, "Do I just sit back and wait for them to get fired?" Um, you know, I can't babysit them, but I also feel like it's not their their intention to be like, I want to go, you know, rat on this person and be like, screw them, get them fired, I hate them. Like, again, I don't think people are, you know, generally malicious in intent. I think that they they kind of want what's supposed to be best for most people, right? Like that's I think generally how people are. That's what I like to believe.

At least that's my philosophy. You might have a different lived experience. That's totally cool. This is how I approach things. So what should this person do? And I think number one is like make sure that there is visibility to the manager, right? I think that's like the something I would appreciate as a manager. And you can do this in ways where it's like you're not ratting on the person or like trying to you don't have to talk about this in a way that where you're like, "Oh crap, am I going to get this person fired for saying something?" Because it's again how you frame it. If you go into the conversation and you're saying things that like you actually are making assumptions about, then that's not helpful. I mean, it might be signal for the manager because it might get them to to look into things and understand better and and take some kind of action, but um don't don't make your assumptions your your accusations, if that makes sense.

So, for example, this person was saying, you know, uh seems like when they're on call, like they happen to miss a lot of uh you know, engagements when they're paged and it's like, oh, oops, like I didn't see that or whatever. Sorry. Um so instead of being like, hey, they're actively avoiding engagements uh and uh you know, they're like sabotaging our team or something like that because of that. the instead of making the accusation, it's like, hey, like when this person's on call, it seems like they're having some difficulty like supporting the team, right? Try to find a way to bring up the um sort of the outcome and not assign what you think is happening. I don't know if that makes sense. Maybe that was a bad example. Um, you could do the same thing like on the number of like uh the sort of someone's velocity or their productivity, right?

Instead of being like this person's actively slacking on on their feature delivery, right? Cuz that you're assigning like some malicious intent to what they're doing and you actually don't know that. You don't know that they're slacking. they could be trying to bust their ass really hard and like they're struggling. You actually do not know. And that's kind of what I'm trying to get at is instead of saying like let me assign the reason that because it is an assumption, talk about the fact that you are observing that they seem to be having a challenge like hey I think this person needs some extra support. Uh, and try hon and I mean I know this is super hard especially if you're getting frustrated like observing this kind of behavior and you're like man I'm fed up with it. I get it. But I mean it genuinely try to lean into like imagine this person was your friend.

And I'm not saying you have to go be best friends with them. I'm just saying like frame it this way. Imagine that was a close friend of yours. If it was a close friend of yours, you would have a genuine concern. You would say like, "Hey, like I I don't think that this person's getting the support they need." I'm not saying you have to go give them the support. If they were your close friend, you you might be doing more of that. But if you were genuinely concerned for someone's ability to do their job effectively, you would try to raise awareness and be like, I want all that I want is for this person to be successful at what they're doing. And I think if you can try to frame things that way, then you can go talk to the person's manager and make that a, you know, a signal boost, a productive conversation to be like, I don't know if you know, but basically I think this person needs some help, right?

Um, it it doesn't have to be, hey, this person's a piece of and like we got to get them fired. Doesn't have to be like that. Um, and I mean that's one way to approach it, but if you're concerned that you uh you're going to get someone in trouble, like just think about if they were my friend, how would I like try to get them support? Talk about it that way. And I realize it's challenging, but try it. Okay. So, it's not this person's responsibility to fix um their peer that seems to be underperforming or being disengaged. Uh I I would certainly appreciate it as a as a manager if there was some uh visibility raised. Um the other thing about that just to mention is like I feel like if if I am doing my job effectively as a manager then I already have awareness but um I've been in situations where I am trying to coach people and work through things where they're having some challenges already.

So I'm aware we're working on it. But um having some signal from the team if team members are like hey like this is you know kind of problematic and like it's kind of affecting the team then I have more signal to be like okay like it's not just uh me working with this person anymore. The impact is kind of spread more broadly. So I have to kind of change some of my tactics. Um I have to think about how I'm going to support the team better. I have to think about like how long have I been trying to work with this person on this stuff because if it's now negatively affecting the rest of the team and in a way that's observable by them um either you know what I'm trying to do with them is not working, the timeline's not correct. Uh it might be time to to make some some adjustments.

But the signal is helpful, right? I I personally even when people are kind of like pissy with me about things and they're like they kind of go into pointing the finger and blaming people. I always try to step back and go look like this is someone frustrated from some situation. I'm not going to just take what they say as like absolute fact because I need to go understand this kind of thing. So, uh, I'm just sharing this like as someone who will sometimes hear things like some blame, some fingerpointing, some this must be malicious intent kind of thing or negligence. Uh, I'm like, you know, thank you for your feedback. U, it's not that I'm ignoring it, but I I need to go kind of look into things and understand them now. Okay. So, couple more thoughts here. Um, if I go back to one of the things I said earlier around like I often don't think that this is malicious.

I also generally don't think that it's like purposeful negligence. Uh, I often think that there's a couple of other things going on. One that I've seen be quite common is that there's uh some external pressure going on that is uh kind of overwhelming someone. So how they show up for work is um is certainly not at their fullest and at some point like the reality is a business can't necessarily sustain that right so I obviously want to work with people if they're having challenges outside of work and be like hey like we can accommodate but at some point if someone's like you know I I just literally can't show up to do my job effectively then like hey this this might not be something that you can accommodate as a as a role right now and like it's it's you know no hard feelings. It's like you actually probably should not be doing this job because it's it's also contributing to pushing you over the edge whether that's stress or any other factor.

Um it might be time that you need to go take off. Um and it's not to say anything about your skill level, anything like that. It's like uh I would argue a lot more of like a mental health kind of a scenario. Let's move over here. One more. Um so like I I think that's actually something that comes up a lot. And this is one of those things like I don't ever expect my employees to like to have to tell me stuff. Like I will never position them to be like, "Hey, you better tell me about about your personal life." Or like, "You better tell me about all your health conditions and all of your uh I don't know, like relationship issues and family troubles." Like I obviously I'm I'm never going to ask that. Maybe it's not obvious, but I would never.

Um but genuinely what happens is that by building better working relationships with employees uh not all but uh many times when people are having you know periodic challenges or there's even been situations where there's really sustained issues um that that people will talk to me about it and like no I'm not I'm not a therapist. That's not my responsibility. I can't solve problems for people outside of work and that kind of thing. But the reality is like the context is helpful because if someone's like, "Hey, like I'm having some issues outside of work and like it's causing a lot of distraction or they've had people where they have, you know, family issues going on. Um whether that's their immediate family or extended and like it's causing a lot of distraction for them and you know how okay, how do we navigate that together, right? and trying to make accommodations and things like that.

So, it's it's helpful because that kind of thing when sustained when other people on the team don't have awareness, they're going, "Oh, this person must be slacking." Right? So, some people try to get ahead of that and they're like, I just want you to know that like I'm not operating at my best. Here's what's going on. And then I can work with them to try and accommodate. Um, so that's one thing when then if team members are noticing and they're going like, "Hey, like you know with so and so this isn't good." Um, I have to find ways to be able to communicate and be like, "Hey, thanks. Like I have uh, you know, I've been talking with this person or working on some things." Uh, it depends on what the situation is, but I'm never going to like say, "Oh yeah, like so and

so's so and so's uncle's like not well and like don't tell them I told you kind of thing." like not you know people have already trusted me with some type of privacy is what it is but I have to find ways to communicate and then work with those other individuals if they're like this is impacting me I'm like cool how I I am the manager for the team how do I help you navigate this you need more support cool let's talk about what that looks like so to this person's original point it's not their responsibility right they're absolutely right it's Uh, I think awareness helps. I think if they, you know, if they have some capacity and they're able to like step in to help, uh, whatever that looks like, right? If it's like, hey, like, um, you know, I noticed that you're kind of struggling with these patterns or whatever else, like then great.

Uh, I think another thing, and I really wanted to talk about this, and I'm might run out of time here. Um, I I think a lot of the time if it's not like outside of work issues, um, I think sometimes people are uh they're scared and it's like because they they don't know things. They don't feel that they have confidence in an area and it's kind of like a vicious cycle, right? So, just to give you an example, especially with on call stuff, I think is such a good example. Um, you're an engineer and you're on call and there's some things that when you're on call or maybe most things when you're on call, you're like, I have no freaking clue how this works. I'm paged on something. I don't know how it works. And so the I think one of the normal human reactions is to to avoid, right?

It doesn't mean that you necessarily ignore the page, but like you kind of want to be like, "Oh like I don't know what to do and like I don't want to be embarrassed and like and you kind of panic and like how do you how do you kind of move this off of yourself uh as quickly as you can because it's wildly uncomfortable and the side effect of doing this because even if you can find ways like let's say you know you can get some other engineer on the team engaged and you're like I know that if I get this person engaged like they're definitely going to solve it and like so at the end of the day issue gets solved like isn't that what we all want like sure but if your if your approach is constantly and you might not even recognize you're

doing it if it's constantly to avoid right oh there's this problem like I don't know like but I think Jimmy on the team like he knows everything like let's let me just go ask Jimmy and he'll he'll get it done um if it's constantly like that what happens is that you never know Right? It's it's only Jimmy or only Sally. Like it's not you and you never get better at it. You get good at not doing things. And you might feel like, hey, I'm doing the right thing because at least I'm getting the issue solved, but at the end of the day, like you constantly run away from the things. And so, yeah, I there's going to be situations where something's like borderline literally on fire and it makes a lot of sense to go get the subject matter expert be like, "Dude, like we

got to like let's get on this call right now." But there's a lot of other situations where you're like, "You need to go investigate." And it's a vicious cycle both ways. Ne vicious, I guess, implies negative. It's a vicious cycle if you're avoiding because you do never get better and then you have no choice but to avoid. But it works the other way too. If you're like screw it, I don't know and I'm just going to dive in and do my best. What happens is that you get good at doing that. You get good at being in uncomfortable situations and learning about stuff and then you become better at those things and then you can solve more problems. So, um, I I really do urge people to kind of take that approach of like, you know, how do I how do I go, okay, I don't know, and like I'm just going to try my best.

And if you keep repeating that, you will guaranteed improve. But I think that's something that happens a lot. Um, I'm using on call as an example here, but I think this can happen too with like different uh feature development and uh debugging issues and that kind of stuff. So, um, just wanted to call that out. Um, yeah. Sorry that was probably all over the place, but hopefully those are some helpful thoughts. But I'm going to go squat, so I'll see you later. Bye-bye.